Category: Random Stuff

South Korea’s National Intelligence Service is one of the suspects of who was the overall mastermind of a prostitution ring that specialized in servicing people who work for the government or defense industry:

The two brothels in Virginia (referred to in the affidavit as ‘Target Locations 8 and 9’) were situated in Unit 245 at the Avalon Mosaic in the quiet suburban town of Fairfax and Unit 649 of the nearby Hanover Tysons

Intelligence experts are becoming increasingly convinced that six high end brothels in the suburbs of Boston and Washington, D.C. were set up by a foreign nation as an espionage ‘honeytrap’.

They believe the brothels – allegedly masterminded by a 41-year-old South Korean woman – targeted politicians, high ranking government officials and defense contractors. 

But the mystery is which country was behind the scheme. Russia, China, Korea itself, or even Israel are al seen as possibly being behind the scheme.

‘Having the Koreans out front could have been a false flag to give China or another country plausible deniability if the plot unraveled,’ a one-time CIA senior operations officer told DailyMail.com in an exclusive interview.

Daily Mail

Considering how stupid the people going to this brothel are they probably shouldn’t be working any where near the government:

Aspiring clients had to submit a membership application before they could book an appointment.

Required documentation included government-issued ID, phone and email contacts, employer information and credit card records, according to court records.

Bizarrely, numerous political, military and business officials provided it all without blinking an eye and proceeded to have sex in an apartment that for all they knew was outfitted with equipment to record video and audio footage.

‘Finding idiots like this would be pure gold for an intelligence service running a honeypot,’ said the retired foreign spy. 

A retired CIA senior operations officer was equally flabbergasted. 

‘This is at the level of a Nigerian prince scam,’ she said.

You can read much more at the link, to include a number of pictures of the prostitutes. Judging by the pictures these were some high-end Korean prostitutes working for this ring. Would China be able to recruit this many South Korean women to work for them? It seems more likely that the ROK NIS would be able to pull this off and according to the article ROK intelligence has attempted honeypot operations in the past to collect intelligence. It will be interesting if we will ever hear who was actually behind this honeypot operation.

This is an interesting historical footnote from World War II:

Deep in the forests of southwestern Oregon is a redwood sapling — a peace offering at the site of an act of war.

Friday marks the 81st anniversary of the end of the only enemy aerial bombing campaign to strike the continental United States during World War II. 

The plan was to firebomb the vast forests of America’s northwest in retaliation for the April 18, 1942, Doolittle Raid on Tokyo. The Japanese hoped their modest effort would torch millions of acres of trees and deprive the U.S. defense industry of tons of wood crucial to the war effort. The Americans would have to send thousands of troops to fight the fires.

Nobuo Fujita, a veteran Japanese Navy pilot, advocated the attack and was given the honor of taking the war to the American home front. 

Twice he would fly his submarine-launched floatplane over the forests near Brookings, Ore., release his bombs and make his way to a rendezvous with the I-25 transport submarine waiting for him off the coast.

Though Fujita did not know it at the time, nearly all the bombs fizzled. An alert student forest ranger stomped out one small flare-up. The wet forest floors took care of the rest.

Stars & Stripes

You can read more at the link.

The French Air Force is currently conducting training with their U.S. and Japanese counterparts during the Northern Edge exercise:

A French Rafale fighter prepares for takeoff at Andersen Air Force Base, Guam, July 5, 2023. (Hannah Strobel/U.S. Air Force)

 The French air force trained alongside its American and Japanese counterparts across the Indo-Pacific recently even as the French president objected to NATO opening an office in Tokyo.

French President Emmanuel Macron has told NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg he opposes such a plan, Japan’s national broadcaster NHK reported Sunday.

The plan was revealed in May amid concern about Chinese aggression toward Taiwan with one defense expert suggesting Yokota Air Base, the home of U.S. Forces Japan in western Tokyo, as a likely site. 

However, an unidentified official at France’s presidential office told journalists Friday that articles of the NATO alliance specify its geographical scope, which is the North Atlantic, according to NHK.

Meanwhile, the French are training alongside U.S. and Japanese forces as part of Northern Edge, which began July 2 and wraps July 21, Air Force Lt. Col. Keegan Dale, commander of 13th Fighter Squadron, told Stars and Stripes by phone Friday. The squadron, from Misawa Air Base, Japan, was deployed to Marine Corps Air Station Iwakuni, south of Hiroshima, for the exercise.

Stars & Stripes

You can read more at the link.